Cats

Cats in Ancient Egypt

Cats(Felis
catus) are among the most common
pets in the world. In the United States, for example, according to a
survey released by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association,
feline pets number around 77 million. Even though cats have now
overtaken dogs in popularity in the US, and are enormously popular
elsewhere, the history of feline domestication is not as well known as that of their canine
counterparts.

A mask used in the burial of a cat
mummy in Ancient
Egypt

In 1888, an Egyptian farmer accidentally uncovered a large tomb containing
thousands upon thousands of mummified cats and kittens. This discovery, outside
the town of
Beni Hasan, contained around eighty thousand cat bodies that date back to
1000-2000 BCE.

Cats in other religions

Feline reverence is not peculiar to
Ancient Egyptian civilisation. Muslim theology maintains that the prophet
Muhammad once found a cat sleeping on his robe; instead of waking it, he cut a
hole through his robe so as not to disturb the animal. This reverence can be
found in ancient Indian texts, where records of cats involved with human society
can be found in two ancient Indian great epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata,
circa 500 BCE. As the Hindu and Parsee religions respected all forms of life and
were especially sympathetic towards cats, all good Hindus were expected to take
care of at least one cat during their lives. By contrast, the Islamic culture
generally regards dogs as somewhat
unhygienic animals.

Not every culture has viewed cats with reverence. The superstitious
persecution of cats by the Roman Catholic Church may have been one of the
contributing factors in the Black Death in the Middle Ages.

Cats in everyday life in Ancient Egypt

The exaltation of cats in Ancient Egypt most likely began with their
contribution to agriculture. Feral cats, or "reed cats", naturally preyed upon
the rats and other vermin that would otherwise eat from the royal
granaries. They earned their place in towns and cities by killing mice,
poisonous snakes and
other pests.

The two main breeds of cat native to Egypt were the jungle cat
Felis
chaus and the African wildcat
Felis silvestris lybica. The latter of these was more commonly
domesticated, largely due to its temperament. The jungle cat was not nearly as
peaceful, and was probably not especially helpful in the initial phases of
domestication.

The African wildcat, the more placid of the two, easily coexisted with the
human population who were eager to rid their streets of
vermin. In
return the cats received protection from humans, in the sense that they would be
safe from other predators as long as they remained near human habitats. These
two species eventually fused to create a new breed of cat, related to the
modern-day
Egyptian Mau.

The change in temperament is attributed to two principal factors: heredity
and learned tolerance of humans. The changes due to domestication follow a
pattern similar to other domesticated animals including
wolves (dogs),
and cattle.
These changes include coloration as there is less need for camouflage in
captivity than in the wild, smaller brain size due to the gradual elimination of
unnecessary survival instincts, and an overall decrease in size due to the
change in diet and habitat.

In Cats: The Rise of the Cat,
Roger Tabor suggests that the domestication process is due to two possible
reasons. Gaining confidence around humans through frequent contact at the
granaries, cats began to venture into settlements, attracted by the indigenous
bird and vermin population. Breeding within itself, a large population of cats
could develop, and would continue on doing so at an exponential rate.
Additionally, familiarity with human society was aided by the association of
cats with the goddess Bast - Egyptian temple priests would often keep cats at their temple as a
representative of the goddess.

Additionally, in their book Wild Cats of the World, Mel Sundquist and
Fiona Sundquist suggest that a likely route to domestication was through the
rearing of kittens captured from the wild. Fashionable Egyptian society tamed
wild animals of all kinds using this method, including baboons, lions and
gazelles in
menageries at the most wealthy households.

Cats in Egyptian mythology

Egypt was not always unified; initially, it was a land with many regional
tribes and nomes. Many nomes had a totemistic system of religion, centering the
worship of an animal as a spiritual symbol. Some peoples would choose a totem
animal because of the services it provided, some for admirable qualities, some
out of fear. Regardless, when war broke out between peoples, the tribe that won
was able to demand more respect for their totem, and mandated its worship.
Eventually an empire was formed under Menes circa 3100 BCE, and a more
pluralistic form of totemism was established. Ibises, eagles, and beetles were
among the totems worshipped alongside cats.

The Egyptians viewed their gods not as simple spirits but as intelligences
that could be personified in a body. The earliest evidence of cats as deities
comes from a 3100 BCE crystal cup decorated with an image of the lion-headed
goddess Mafdet. The goddess Bast was originally depicted as a fiercely
protective and warlike lion, but as her
image "softened" over time she became more strongly associated with domestic
cats.

As cats were sacred to Bast, the practice of mummification was extended to
them, and the respect that cats received after death mirrored the respect they
were treated with in everyday life. The Greek historian Herodotus
wrote that in the event of a fire men would guard the fire to make certain that
no cats ran into the flame. Herodotus also wrote that when a cat died, the
household would go into mourning as if for a human relative, and would often
shave their eyebrows to signify their loss.

Such was the strength of feeling towards cats that killing one, even
accidentally, incurred the death penalty. Another Greek historian,
Diodorus Siculus, describes an interesting example of swift justice imposed upon
the killer of a cat: about 60 BCE, he witnessed the chariot of a Roman soldier
accidentally run over an Egyptian cat. An outraged mob gathered and, despite
pleas from pharaoh Ptolemy XII, killed the soldier.

Bubastis and the Cult of the Cat

Although the cat cult was an significant religious movement by the birth of
the New Kingdom it gained new importance when Shoshenq I developed Bubastis,
chief centre of worship for the goddess Bast, located east of the Nile Delta,
into an important city. At the same time, Bast developed into an immensely
popular and important deity representing fertility, motherhood, protection and
the benevolent aspects of the sun - along with Sekhmet, she was known as the Eye
of Ra. The cult of the cat garnered a huge following and thousands of pilgrims
journeyed each year to Bubastis to celebrate. Bubastis also became another name
by which the goddess was known.

Close to the centre of the city lay a large temple to Bast. This temple was
in a depression which sited it at a lower elevation to the rest of the city,
which had been raised to minimize flood damage from the nearby. Of this
Herodotus, who visited the city in 450 BCE, wrote that although the size of the
shrine to Bast was perhaps 'not as large as those of other cities, and probably
not as costly, no temple in all of Egypt gave more pleasure to the eye'.

Herodotus went on to describe the temple in detail. A canal within this
depression gave the temple the appearance of a man-made island. In the courtyard
was a grove of trees leading the way to the interior, which contained a massive
statue of Bast - and a great number of sacred cats, cared for by the temple
priests with donations from pilgrims. The temple's cat population, while
respected, was extremely large and needed to be moderated by the periodic
sacrificial culling of kittens, which were then mummified and sold to pilgrims
as relics.

Bubastis became a marketplace for merchants of all sorts; artisans came forth
with thousands of bronze sculptures and amulets
depicting cats to worshippers of Bast. These amulets commonly featured an image
of a cat and its kittens and were often used by women trying to have children,
praying to Bast that they be granted the same number of children as kittens
depicted on the amulet.

Herodotus wrote that the annual festival of Bast held in the city was the one
of the most popular of all, with attendees from all over Egypt, who would raft
down the Nile celebrating and feasting all the way. When they arrived in
Bubastis, they feasted yet more and made sacrifices
to Bast.

The famed revelling and commercialism of Bubastis even made its way into
Judeo-Christian mythology. In the sixth century BCE, the prophet Ezekiel wrote
that "The young men of Aven and of Pibeseth [Bubastis] shall fall by the sword:
and these cities shall go into captivity" Ezekiel 30:17. Ezekiel believed that
these cities would be punished, like Nineveh, for their perceived paganism and
sin.

By 525 BCE, Egypt was essentially the only empire not conquered by the
Persians. At that point Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, set out to do just that.
Cambyses and his army crossed the fifty-six mile stretch of desert to the
Egyptian outpost of Pelesium on camelback; they then clashed down upon the Egyptian army who
were reluctant to strike back at the sacred symbol of the cat upon the Persian
shields.

Funerary traditions

Herodotus noted that cats who died anywhere in Egypt were often taken to
Bubastis to be mummified and buried in the great cemetery, but this may or may
not have been the case. At the burial site in Bubastis the Swiss Egyptologist
Edouard Naville found more than 20 m³ (720 cubic feet) of cat remains but also a
great deal of evidence of cremation. Naville found stacks of cat bones in many
pits, the walls of which were made up of bricks and clay. Near each pit lay a
furnace, its bricks blackened from fire. This discovery causes some problems.
The mummification and preservation of the body was intended to make it possible
for the deceased's ka to locate its host and subsequently be reborn into the
afterlife.
As the body would have to be intact for this process to occur, cremation would
seem an undesirable way of dealing with the body of a sacred creature with a
ka. Nevertheless, many cats were afforded the full embalming ceremony and
buried in other great cemeteries along the Nile.

In her book The Cult of the Cat,
Patricia Dale-Green states that, "The cat's body was placed in a linen sheet and
carried amidst bitter lamentations by the bereaved to a sacred house where it
was treated with drugs and spices by an embalmer". She goes on to state that
although the cat of an Egyptian noble would receive more extravagant burial
status, the body of a worker's cat would still be carefully prepared and the
embalming carried out with the same conscientiousness as for a human body, often
with provisions for the afterlife such as pots of milk and even mummified mice.

Nowhere, perhaps, is this appreciation shown more than in the colossal tomb
at the temple of Bast discovered in 1888. This tomb, outside of Beni Hasan, held
more than nineteen tonnes of animal mummies and remains, the vast majority being
cats but a number of mongooses, dogs and foxes were amongst the specimens that
made it to the British Museum. The farmer who made the discovery sold most of the tomb's
contents to be ground up as fertilizer, but fortunately a number of specimens
made it into the hands of scientists for testing and examination. Some of these
are on display at the British Museum.

The sole Egyptologist to visit the site,
William Martin Conway, wrote: "The plundering of the cemetery was a sight to
see, but one had to stand well windward. The village children came [...] and
provided themselves with the most attractive mummies they could find. These they
took down the river bank to sell for the smallest coin to passing travelers. The
path became strewn with mummy cloth and bits of cats' skulls and bones and fur
in horrid positions, and the wind blew the fragments about and carried the stink
afar". (quoted in Tabor p26).

Recently, during the making of his documentary for the BBC, Cats: The Rise
of the Cat, Roger Tabor discovered a further cat cemetery at Bast's temple.
This find consists of a twenty centimetre-thick layer of compressed mummies
which spans more than sixty metres in length.

The decline of cat-worship

The cult of Bast was officially banned by imperial decree in 390 CE. Egypt
has since experienced a decline in the respect once held for cats and although
they are still kept as pets and tolerated elsewhere because they catch pests,
the cat has lost practically all religious significance in modern Egypt.